At a heated debate in Delhi recently, Union Commerce Secretary G K Pillai presented the government's justification for SEZs. But the central question remained unanswered: how can India's 630 million farmers transition to other occupations?

The SEZ issue is being highlighted as a farmers' issue, with a rehabilitation policy being worked out for those who will lose their land. But with 80% of approved SEZs in coastal states, what about the thousands of fisherfolk who will lose livelihoods based on the sea, estuaries and coastal systems?

China's Shenzhen has workers slaving for 9-14 hours a day at less than minimum wages, 500,000 child labourers, and a crime rate nine times that of Shanghai. Is this the economic model Indian policymakers want to emulate, especially at a time when China itself has discredited and abandoned its SEZ policy?

From the mid-'80s, China experienced a 'zone fever' much like India's, with millions of hectares of agricultural land being transferred to infrastructure and industrial use. But Beijing woke up in time to the dangers of the speculative bubble thus created and acted to conserve arable lands

Could the Magarpatta model in Pune be a way out of the SEZ impasse? Here farmers have leased - not sold -- 400 acres of farmland to developers who are paying them a royalty in perpetuity, besides giving them new housing in the township and various kinds of supply contracts

With the huge influx of foreign capital into Indian realty, real estate might replace IT/BPO as the lead growth story in the Indian economy in the years to come. Are India's farmlands set to become a global casino, asks Aseem Shrivastava

India appears to be backtracking on its earlier tough stand of insisting that massive agricultural subsidies in developed countries be removed, in order to push through the stalled Doha Round of trade negotiations

The viewpoint rapidly gaining ground in India is that labour must inevitably transfer from agriculture to industry and services, as happened in the now developed countries. But there are three strong reasons why a replication of these processes in an Indian setting is unlikely, even impossible